Disc swap

thistleboon

A friend of mine has tried to put a hard drive from an XP machine into an older WIN98 machine. It doesn't work although he tells me it has been wired correctly. Any ideas please?

amcluesent

Not as the boot disk I assume? Maybe that the XP disk was formatted using NTFS which Win98 can't read.

thistleboon

Thank you amcluesent .
You write 'maybe.' I thought the same
Do others agree this is the reason?

amcluesent

>It doesn't work<

If the disk is visible at all, the BIOS should show it as the PC boot.

You could try this NTFS driver for Win98

thistleboon

Thanks for the information, I guessed it wouldn't work but i wanted to consult with others before telling him it can't be done without formatting the disk to the WIN98 FAT32 file system and loosing all his data.

ormus

more info please?
has he installed the xp disk as a second hdd? and does it have xp installed on it?

if it was installed as a sole hdd, then maybe the old pc HW is not good enough for the xp OS?

thistleboon

Yes, thats what he has tried to do. I was fairly sure it wouldn't work because of the differing file systems.
I just spoken to him on the phone and he hasn't tried that, so he will have a go.

Thanks